


The Neapolitan Ice Cream of People

by Ashling



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, F/M, Food, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Thanksgiving, borderline sexist workplace mention/general career anxiety, whether each relationship is platonic or romantic is honestly up to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21943048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: For a one-bedroom apartment with three people in it, it's pretty comfortable after all.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Neapolitan Ice Cream of People

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyReisling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyReisling/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, LadyReisling! Hope this hits the spot.

This is the kind of New York apartment so cheap that it’s two steps up from having cockroaches, so cheap that Dan and Casey and Dana all had to convince each other that it was only temporary before they moved in, so cheap that Dan can hear both Whitney Houston and Dana through the front door.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody is Dana’s pump-up song, the song she sings when she’s not having a good time yet, but she’s determined to, the kind of coiled energy that could go either way. Any other night, he’d love that, but tonight he doesn’t have it in him. He’s almost tempted to just turn around and come back in an hour, but the streets of New York City aren’t too fun when you’re broke and tired and lugging a massive scarlet suitcase. And there ought to be a limit to a man’s cowardice in one twenty-four hour day. So he fishes out his key from his pocket, and opens the door.

The CD player is on the table, blasting, but the bedroom door is closed, and Dana’s singing behind it. Dan’s too exhausted to inquire. He just locks the door behind him, turns the volume down a little bit, and calls, “Hey.”

“There is nothing wrong with my clothes,” Dana declares, from behind the bedroom door. 

Dan sinks into one of their two folding chairs. “Not sure I’d be the ideal consultant for women’s fashion,” he says, “But I don’t see any reason to change a thing.”

“Thank you! Exactly!”

Next to the CD player, there’s a half-drunk glass of wine that turns out to be Moscato, way too sweet. Dan finishes it off.

“And you know what?” Dana yells. Apparently his silence was response enough. “Despite being the worst paid and the most likely to be working overtime on stuff too boring to even describe, I am the most professional person on that entire floor! I work my ass off! There is _nothing_ wrong with my clothes.”

The bedroom door is flung open, and there stands Dana, wearing her very best clothes, a navy skirt suit with a cream blouse underneath, and although she’s smiling fiercely, Dan can tell at a glance that she’s hopping mad. But in an instance, another look lights up her face. It comes as a surprisingly nice feeling to Dan, being a nice surprise. Her smile now has nothing but affection underneath.

She makes two Ls with her thumbs and forefingers, then puts them together into a rectangle, framing Dan, squinting.

“You could put me in the Louvre, right?” he says. He finds he’s smiling too.

“Close, but no cigar.”

“The MoMA?”

“No, I mean.” Her hands drop to her sides. “You’re tall and pasty, you’re wearing the plainest gray button-down and jeans I’ve ever seen in my life, you’re a total goof, and you almost certainly know who won the World Series in 1971—”

“—the Pittsburgh Pirates—”

“—but somehow, you’re not Casey.” She cocks her head to one side. “Don’t tell me you sent him as a pinch hitter. You think your family aren’t gonna notice the difference?”

The thought of Casey meeting his family, his dad in particular, has Dan so stuck between laughing and crying that he doesn’t speak, just for a split second. Between the two of them, so used to conversation at the speed of table tennis, a split second of silence still means a lot. “He’ll be here in a second. He’s getting us dinner.” 

“What kind of dinner?”

“There’s two kinds of Jewish comfort food. There’s the kind that takes time and effort to make, like matzo ball soup—and then there’s all-night dim sum.”

Dana turns off the CD player and drops into the chair opposite his. “Which takes no time or effort to make.” 

“Which will not involve me having to do dishes,” Dan amends.

“Why do you need comfort food, again?”

“It’s gonna be Thanksgiving tomorrow. I think I’m entitled to a little gluttony.”

“Any particular reason you didn’t get on that train, Dan?”

Dan looks at the empty wine glass. Shrugs. He really should come up with a good excuse, but the idea of lying to Dana seems terribly bleak. “I told my dad that I had a work emergency.” 

Again, even a moment’s pause between the two of them seems horribly obvious. Then she’s getting up out of the chair with a scrape of metal on wood, and her voice is determinedly pleasant and reassuring. “Why don’t you go sit on the couch. I’ll just go change and then we can watch some game tape, okay?”

“Sure,” Dan says, but then her hand is on his shoulder, briefly, and his throat closes up. He’s cold, it’s cold in here because their landlord is a jerk, and how could he not have noticed earlier? There’s a craving in him so urgent that he doesn’t know how he could have missed it there all along. Nobody’s touched him since probably Tuesday, when it was Casey mock-wrestling him over the last slice of pizza, and he didn’t need it so bad back then, when he still believed he’d get on the damn train.

When Dana returns, he's tucked into a corner of the couch with his feet on the edge of it and his knees to his chest.

“You look cold,” she says. 

“I’m okay.”

“I’m gonna get a blanket.”

His throat, again. And then the front door swings open suddenly, and there's Casey, brisk and fresh and wearing a big yellow scarf that his niece had knitted for him, arms encircling a huge brown paper bag. 

"Hey," he says.

"Dana went to get a blanket," Dan says, like a defense. He feels like he might need a defense against the surge of _something_ that comes over him at that one word. He's greeted Casey like that hundreds of times himself, and he's never let Casey down once. Not in any way that matters. Not that it's relevant. Just—

Casey closes and locks the door behind him, then walks to the couch, nudging at Dan's knee with his hip. "Move over."

"What?" Dan's ready this time. No more with the silences and the throat stuff, and being touched isn't that big a deal, if he really thinks about it. Back to the ping pong of it all.

"I'm sitting there; that's my spot. Move over."

"This is your spot? We're not five-year-olds at the dinner table."

"No, we're twenty-five-year-olds at the dinner couch. Move over. You're sitting in the middle."

"Why?" But Dan's already moving.

"Because he who gets the food gives the orders." Casey puts the bag down on the ground, sits next to Dan, and takes off his coat and scarf.

"Right. How could I have missed it? You look the very model of a modern major general," says Dan, eyeing a conspicuous mustard stain that the scarf had been hiding.

Casey grins. "Sure, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral—" His attempt at music is suddenly stifled by the appearance of a thick duvet dropped upon his head. 

"I can't believe you were doing Pirates of Penzance without me," says Dana.

Casey lifts up one corner of the blanket and peeps out under it. "Neither can I. Please forgive me." He looks so droll and speaks so penitently, Dan can't help but crack a smile.

Dana goes over and rummages through the brown bag until she finds a little styrofoam box of spring rolls. "You're forgiven." 

"Whew!" Casey puts a hand over his heart, melodramatically, and then rummages through the bag himself. "Here." And suddenly there's four different cartons on Dan's lap, plus chopsticks and a wad of napkins.

Meanwhile Dana fiddles with the VCRR, a spring roll sticking out of her mouth like the world's fattest cigar, until a game shows up on the TV. 

"Rugby?" says Casey. "Seriously? It's my night off."

Dana gestures with exasperation. "How are you gonna be a sportscaster if you can't even find a way to enjoy half the sports in the world?"

"Rugby is not half the sports in the world."

"Rugby, soccer—"

"Wait a second," says Dan. "I mean, I know that saying this could get me thrashed within an inch of my life in certain places, but I've never seen a better argument against democracy than soccer. The most popular sport, and you're lucky if you get more than three goals a game? Come on."

"You're a cretin," says Dana, fondly. "Casey—"

"Mm?" Conveniently, Casey's mouth is stuffed full of char siu chung fun, with a bit of sauce dripping down his chin. 

"You too." She wipes the sauce away with her thumb, then sits down next to Dan and goes to town on the remaining spring rolls.

Casey drapes the duvet across all three of them before laying into a whole leaf's worth of sticky rice like there's no tomorrow. Dan, for his part, devours the lo bak go. 

Maybe it's the familiar, savory taste of it, the soft inside and the fried outside; maybe it's Casey and Dana on either side of him like bulwarks, solid and warm; maybe it's the silence, as comfortable and lived-in as an old sweater. But in that moment, Dan could just about swear that he's enjoying watching rugby.

When at last there’s nothing left but empty cartons, and Dana has her legs sprawled across Dan’s lap while Casey has his arm behind Dan’s shoulders on the back of the couch, the first half of the game draws to a close.

“Hey,” says Dana, and Dan catches a slight movement of Casey’s head as he turns to look at her. It might be a warning look, Dan thinks. He’s not sure. Dana goes on, “About earlier. You don’t have a work emergency, do you?” 

“Nah,” says Dan quickly. Too quickly. If he treats the truth lightly, maybe the others won’t feel how heavy it is. “Just couldn’t stand to go.”

“That’s fair,” says Casey, and okay, the two of them are definitely giving each other Looks over his head. Dan casts around for something to end this.

“What about you?” he says. “Earlier, I mean. With the clothes, and the singing, and the yelling. Professionalism. What was up with that?”

“Nothing,” says Dana, too quickly. The same kind of too quickly. “Just having some fun.”

Dan senses this diversion will work, and more than that, he’s intrigued. “Wine is for fun; Whitney Houston is for fun; a skirt suit isn’t for fun.”

“Maybe you just aren’t meeting the right ladies, Dan. A skirt suit can be plenty of fun.”

Casey breaks in. “Sorry, what’s this?”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Dana, at the same moment that Dan recites, “‘There is _nothing_ wrong with my clothes.’” And then, hearing the words, Dan hears a bit more. Oh.

“Who’s talking about your clothes?” he says. He can tell from Dana’s eyes that he’s found out something.

“Well, right now, us,” says Casey, dryly.

“Nobody that matters,” says Dana.

“But you still needed Whitney Houston,” says Dan.

“I always need Whitney Houston. Is there any more bao left?”

“No. Hey.” Dan looks at her, voice light, eyes steady. “You know I’m tall, right?”

“I’m so lost right now,” says Casey.

Dana’s holding Dan’s gaze, her chin up a bit, a half-smile forgotten on her face.

Dan pats him on the chest. “You’re tall too.”

“Thanks?” says Casey.

“Tall and loyal. And, despite our lack of combat experience, I really think that together, we’d make a good team.”

Casey’s nearly caught up. “Who are we fighting?”

“I’m not sure yet,” says Dan. He’s still looking at Dana; she’s still looking right back. Finally, she throws up her hands.

“It was barely anything. I just didn’t want you guys getting all worked up over something that doesn’t matter. You know I can handle myself.”

“Yeah, but,” says Dan, “what if we’re just incredibly bloodthirsty?”

“We’re just looking for a reason,” puts in Casey.

Dan spreads his hands in a gesture of innocence, immedately contradicted by: “Me, I’ve been plotting murder mysteries since I was ten.”

“And I have anger issues.”

“I can’t tell which of you is supposed to be the good cop,” says Dana. Her smile this time is small but real; Dan counts that smile as a victory of his own silliness. But, more importantly, she clearly can tell that they won’t let it go, and it’s better to get this over with. “I asked Eddie the other day if I could talk to him about my future at Sports Night. Obviously, I don’t want to be an assistant forever. I asked him what I could do to prepare, because I’d love to sit at that desk someday, and, uh, basically he said that I would ‘never get anywhere dressed like that’, and then he laughed, and then he left. Something about a rumor about the draft and the Broncos, I didn’t catch it. It was really nothing. But you know Finn Drummond?”

“The redhead?” guesses Casey.

“That’s the one. We were both hired on as assistants at around the same time last year, and he just got promoted, and I know that he actually had more experience than me when we started, so maybe it makes sense, but—if I wake up one day and I’m thirty and I’m still just somebody’s assistant, I am gonna have a full-on breakdown. I can feel it. I’m within spitting distance of the desk—it’s _right there,_ every single day—but if I never touch it…” Dana throws her hands in the air. “Whatever. It’s not just Eddie. I can’t tell what’s crap and what’s just people not caring about assistants, or—I can’t tell.”

Dan puts his arm around her shoulders, the same way Casey did for him. “Murder pact?” he says.

“I’m down,” says Casey. 

“No murder.” But Dana nudges into Dan’s neck, and that seems good.

“You’ll run that place one day,” he says, half into her hair. “Guaranteed.”

“One hundred percent,” says Casey. “I would bet my bank account on it.”

“You’re in insane student debt,” says Dana.

“Okay. I’d bet Dan’s bank account on it.”

She laughs. “If I agree to a murder pact, will you stop saying nice things about me?”

“No,” says Dan, “but we should have a murder pact anyways.”

“Okay,” Dana says.

“Okay.”

The three of them are pressed so close now, under the duvet, that Dan’s beginning to sweat. He doesn’t dare move.

“You know,” Casey says, after a while, “A year ago, if you asked me where I wanted to be next Thanksgiving, I probably would have said, having dinner with Lisa and her family. And I was really pissed for a while that it wasn’t gonna be like that.”

Dan wisely refrains from mentioning that he had, in fact, noticed Casey’s displeasure after his fiancée left him at the altar. That in fact he would have had to be catatonic not to. But all the snark in the world isn’t worth revisiting those particular memories.

“But now, I think I’m okay. I think we’re okay. I wouldn’t trade this for anything, you know? Us. All of us.” Casey’s hand is on the back of Dan’s neck; his thumb traces a slow arc through the hair there. “I’m glad you’re staying for Thanksgiving.”

Dan looks at him, looks at those earnest eyes, and smiles, crookedly and with immense affection. “I know. Ow!” Dana has punched him in the shoulder. “Okay, okay.” He takes a breath, a little space to put together the right words. “I’m glad I’m staying too. You guys are self-evidently batty—” He pauses, dramatically, to acknowledge Dana’s balled-up fist. “—but I love you.” It comes out softer than he thought. It comes out truer than he thought. He doesn’t mind, after all.


End file.
